Ailbhe Ní Bhriain: The Dream Pool Intervals

Hugh Lane Gallery presents a new body of work by one of Ireland’s most exciting visual artists, Ailbhe Ní Bhriain. Entitled The Dream Pool Intervals, the exhibition is a meditation on the spectre of loss that haunts the contemporary imagination.

Working with film, collage, tapestry, print and regularly collaborating with musicians and composers, Ní Bhriain’s art is rooted in an exploration of imperial legacy, human displacement and the Anthropocene. These intertwined subjects are approached through an associative use of narrative and a painstakingly crafted visual language that verges on the surreal. She sidesteps directive positions and familiar binaries, exposing instead the layers of ambiguity and contradiction embedded in these fraught issues. The resulting worlds she creates are at once idiosyncratic, irresistible and deeply unsettling.

At Hugh Lane Gallery a procession of five large-scale jacquard tapestries woven from cotton, wool, silk and lurex form the exhibition’s centre. In these intricately woven works, segments of archival portraiture from colonial and early industrial periods merge with imagery of nature and the built environment to form a series of tableaux that reflect the fragmented way in which information is absorbed today. Ní Bhriain’s tapestries offer a journey through emblematic iconography of past colonial repression and early technological aspirations.

Michael Dempsey, Head of Exhibitions, Hugh Lane Gallery says: “Ní Bhriain seeks to locate our growing anxieties of crises within a world where colonial and industrial legacies are fused with the consciousness of our current moment. Capturing the mood of society today, the relevance of Ní Bhriain’s themes cannot be understated. Hugh Lane Gallery is delighted to present her work”.

Describing her works, Ailbhe Ní Bhriain states: “In the tapestries are images of destroyed architecture – gathered from multiple sources, icons of war and climate disaster that seem to define this period”.

Of the Artist, Barbara Dawson, Director, Hugh Lane Gallery says: “In Ailbhe Ní Bhriain’s monumental tapestries, we are presented with mysterious mise en scéne in the ruins of previous world orders forcing us to rethink perceived concepts of progress and advancement in the face of human and ecological fragmentation.”

The Dream Pool Intervals is curated by Michael Dempsey, Head of Exhibitions, Hugh Lane Gallery, and will be accompanied by an illustrated catalogue available May 2025. Ailbhe Ní Bhriain: The Dream Pool Intervals officially opens to the public on 27 March 2025 and runs until 28 September 2025. Admission is free.

For press queries please contact: Pickles PR and Hugh Lane Gallery